


and so i'm offering this simple phrase

by hitlikehammers



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Christmas Festivities, Fluff, Growing Old Together, M/M, Relationship Across Time, Retirement, Romance, winter holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-26
Updated: 2013-12-26
Packaged: 2018-01-06 06:19:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1103425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The winter holidays, across the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and so i'm offering this simple phrase

**Author's Note:**

> A little belated, because this time of year is _not_ made for timeliness, I am convinced—also not beta'ed or Britpicked. This time of year is also not made for asking anyone else to share in the editing of my random writing insanity (now that, I _know_ ).
> 
> It is _entirely_ obvious, here, that I'm not British, and my understanding of British Christmas traditions is, at this juncture, second-hand at best. The internet was my friend in trying to figure details, so: apologies for all the things that don't fit.

The walls around them are seeping; literally— _seeping_ , nearly porous for how ancient they are, deteriorating: unable to keep out the storm.

“Do you know what day it is?” John asks, and it’s not even irritable, it’s not even resigned. Well, perhaps it’s a bit resigned as he stares up, blank-faced at the ceiling, pockmarked with holes in it, patched with light like tiny stars, and maybe that’s appropriate. Maybe that’s all John’s going to get of a Silent Night or whatever he’d half-fantasised about.

“Monday,” Sherlock eventually answers him, tone bored, but the put-upon kind: forced.

He’s wondering why John’s asking. Obviously.

“Wednesday, actually,” John sighs, and tries to trace constellations in the ceiling-breaks. “But that’s not what I meant.”

He doesn’t have to see the man to know how Sherlock frowns with just his eyes, chews at the barest bit of flesh inside his cheek so as not to make it visible, not to make it known.

“The numerical date?” Sherlock scoffs. “You know I don’t pay any attention to—”

“It’s Christmas, Sherlock,” John interrupts. “Please tell me you didn’t delete Christmas,” and he’s tired, he sounds tired when he says it. Not so much at having to explain these sorts of things, at having to points them out—well, yes, that too, a bit—but more _actually_ tired. They’ve been on this goddamned stakeout for seventeen hours, cramped in this christ-forsaken cupboard, and while at least they’re warm—body heat at such a proximity’s got its perks—it’s getting to be a bit much.

When Sherlock says nothing, however, John turns, tries to make him out in the low light, tries to think of something to say in the face of his flatmate _actually deleting_ —

“No,” Sherlock finally answers. “No, I did not delete Christmas.” John hears him shift, and something changes in his tone that John can’t quite place. 

“That’s not to say I haven’t tried,” Sherlock adds, a touch defensive; “but alas, it’s like a _disease_ ,” and John can’t help the grin that springs to his lips at the sheer _disdain_ in Sherlock’s voice: “It infects _everything_.”

John can’t argue with the principle, really—particularly when, if they’re quiet, he can pick out carollers beneath the rushing of their breaths; he can’t argue with the principle, but he’d be inclined to change the descriptor, himself.

“Will it be much longer, do you think?” John asks, hopeful, but not naive. They’ll be here all fucking night, he’s got no delusions.

“Perhaps,” Sherlock answers him warily. “Perhaps not.”

John sighs. Yep. All fucking night.

John gets ready to settle in, focuses on the singing in the distance and tries to imagine a fire, a hot cuppa, as he strains to figure out which carol they’re doing, out there in the cold.

“Merry Christmas, John,” Sherlock murmurs out of nowhere.

John smiles softly, and comes back to the here, the now, and Sherlock’s very close to him, in the here and now.

Very close indeed. 

John can feel it, when his breathing hitches, when his heart skips.

He can feel it, and that’s when it happens. A shuffling somewhere near the front of the warehouse.

The scrape of a key in a lock. 

Sherlock catches his eye in a shaft of streaming light, and John reads anticipation and excitement in them, and John wishes, without any logical reason he cares to admit, that it’s more than just the promise of the chase in that gaze.

John nods, and they prepare to move.

_______________________________ 

“Jesus,” John gasps out on a breathy chuckle as he sprawls flat on the floor, the heat of the fire licking at the tips of his out-stretched fingers, emanating just shy of his bare skin as the sweat starts to cool, as a shiver threatens to build at the base of his spine, sneaking upward.

“Hmm,” and it’s caught sharp, that shiver, and transformed entirely as Sherlock’s naked body blankets him, as the curve of his smile covers John’s nipple, as he licks John’s orgasm from the lines of John’s ribs.

“Appropriate,” Sherlock purrs, nestling below John’s chin and wrapping around him, boneless and beautiful. “Given the admittedly tenuous cultural and religious affiliations of the day.”

John huffs something like a laugh as he glances toward the window, blinks at the patterns that the frost’s drawn into the glass.

“You’re a fucking furnace,” John whispers into Sherlock’s damp curls, the words dying when Sherlock presses lips against the hollow of John’s throat. 

“Given the weather,” Sherlock mouths hot into his skin. “I’d say that’s a boon.”

John agrees, of course.

Not just because of the weather.

_______________________________ 

“This is all your own doing, you know,” John scolds as he brings Sherlock some tablets with a cup of tea, balancing the saucer that holds them in one hand while he reaches with the other to adjust the blanket wrapped around Sherlock’s shoulders as he shivers against the rawness, the ache inside his veins.

“It’s a misconception that going out of doors,” Sherlock sniffles at him petulantly, the glare tempered by the glassiness of those sea-change eyes, the raw-red of that stilted nose; “Inappropriately dressed,” and Sherlock sneezes, rather spectacularly, and he blinks owlish for hardly a moment before John’s handing him a fistful of tissues. 

“Will result in a head cold,” he finishes, quite pathetically, and John has to fight the grin that threatens because this man, he’s absolutely insane, but he’s _endearing_ to the point that it simmers in John’s chest and keeps him warm in the cold.

Which is probably problematic, but John’s rather preoccupied right now.

So that can wait.

“You’re a doctor,” Sherlock continues, snuffed up and only half-coherent; “you should know that.”

“Shut it,” John chides, though it’s gentle. He fluffs two pillows at the end of the sofa and grabs for the blanket Sherlock’s wrapped in, easing the man prone against the cushions.

“Lie back,” he instructs, and Sherlock obeys—a testament, probably, to just how wretched the man’s feeling, and John doesn’t care about the truth of it, honestly, because cold or no cold, Sherlock shouldn’t wander out on their doorstep in his dressing gown, fresh from the shower, when the temperature’s dipped below freezing. 

“Stay,” and John startles, because he hadn’t even realised that he’d tucked the blanket around Sherlock’s body, that he was standing with the back of his hand to Sherlock’s brow, just about to pull away.

He doesn’t know what shows on his face, but it lights panic into Sherlock’s bleary eyes.

“Please stay,” Sherlock breathes on the barest huff of air, so soft John could ignore it, could think it the wish of his own mind.

But it’s warmer. It’s warmer in his chest than his own fantasies, than his own desires ever know.

John smiles softly at Sherlock, and lets his hand trail through the limp strands of Sherlock’s hair, brushing them away from his forehead, tucking them in behind his ears.

“Tea,” he says fondly, because Sherlock needs more fluids, and tea, well: tea solves everything.

From a bad cold to the tightness, the wanting caught in John’s heart as it thrums like mad beneath the relief, the affection that Sherlock’s eyes betray when they’re unmasked like this: unveiled for all their feeling. 

And so: tea it is.

_______________________________

“Sherlock,” John gasps out a protest as Sherlock nearly dances around him, suspended by frenetic energy and the fabric bunched up in his hands; “I’m—”

“Quiet, John,” Sherlock cuts him off with a sharp look, punctuated by two hands lifting his arms and wrestling yet another jumper over his head. The sleeves get stuck on the not one, not two, but three previous layers he’d suffered with comparatively little complaint, but this: this is crossing the very fine line John still maintains when it comes to Sherlock being...well.

Being Sherlock.

“Sherlock, I mean it,” John flails, and Sherlock huffs when John’s head gets through the neck but the sleeves get caught around his biceps. He sees it, as Sherlock grabs a fleece half-zip and eyes John with careful consideration: the logistics of his intentions whirring frantic behind his eyes.

“Just one more—”

“Sherlock!” John cries out, flapping the armless sleeves of his last layer of winter-garb in the air with gusto, catching Sherlock harsh across the chest with a flying cuff of the left sleeve. “I can barely move!”

Sherlock steps back, confused, almost hurt, and John peels off the jumper and throws it violently across the room so that he can see properly, so that he can _breathe_ properly against how goddamned _stifling_ it is underneath all this impossible wool: so that he can look at Sherlock with both eyes and all his focus and figure out what in god’s name is going on.

“You wanted a walk to watch the snow,” John reminds him, musters himself to patience. “Which requires, you know,” and John tries to smile ruefully as Sherlock blinks, as his cheeks pinken: “the ability to _walk_.”

Sherlock stares at him, and his jaw works a bit around the words he still struggles with: the words that reflect the soft parts of him, the spaces in him that can be hurt, that throb wickedly with feeling so fiercely: all the time.

“I just,” Sherlock swallows, avoids John’s eyes. “You need to stay warm,” he says finally, and then he looks up, and his gaze says everything; the quiet of his tone, the weight of it bleeding true: “You need to take care of yourself.”

And John softens, then: softens because after the bullet John had taken in the right shoulder, and the collapsed lung that followed, he’d had to be careful, had to take particular care. They’d slowed down, then, the both of them, but he’s improved considerably, and while age is creeping steadily toward them both, they’ve got a few more years before the conversation of _what next_ becomes unavoidable, even for two bastards as stubborn as themselves.

For now, though, John is _fine_. 

But the concern, the thought: that warms him straight through in a way much lovelier, much more real than all the clothing he’s labouring beneath.

“Let’s try,” John reasons with a smile as he strips off another thick shirt. “One less layer here, and a different scarf.” He uncoils the bulky, stringy thing at his neck and nods to the pile of paraphernalia that might be termed climate-appropriate in Siberia. “The thick one.” He reaches for said item of choice, but Sherlock’s hand stops him.

“No,” Sherlock exhales, gentle, and keeps John’s wrist in his own as he unwraps the blue scarf—worn now, but so loved—from his own neck, reaching to fit it carefully, purposefully around John’s, and if Sherlock’s hand lingers at John’s throat, at the line of his jaw, John doesn’t complain. 

Sherlock surveys the finished product as John buttons his jacket over the ensemble, struggling against the bulk as he fastens to the top. Sherlock nods, breathes deep, and there’s still a touch of tension in him, and John feels both very full of something wonderful, and very sad, all at once.

But then Sherlock leans in, grabs his own scarf to pull John close, and kisses him full on the lips.

And John feels less of anything that isn’t tingling and whole.

_______________________________

“Jammie Dodgers?” John asks, brow raised.

“Festive colour scheme,” Sherlock shrugs, and points to the heart cut at the centre; “And an implicit token of affection.”

For all the indifference that Sherlock puts into his explanation, John can hear the pride there, undercut by wary askance.

And for all the evidence this gives to the arguments against letting Sherlock do the shopping, John can’t help but feel unabashedly _fond_ , just now, and he takes the biscuit Sherlock’s holding out of his hands and takes a bite; holds the half that’s left to Sherlock’s lips until he bites in kind.

Sherlock’s studying him, though, and closely, as he chews, as he swallows, and he must read John’s adoring exasperation—something along the lines of _Mrs. Hudson’s with her sister and there are kidneys in the fridge and we’ve got beans to eat with tea and when I said grab something for Christmas dinner I wasn’t expecting a spread, but damnit, I wasn’t thinking colours, you mad, wonderful loon_.

So when Sherlock huffs, reaches into the Tesco bag and rummages, John barely knows what to expect. After a few minutes of arranging, Sherlock extends a hand.

A hand full of Jelly Babies. Just the red and green ones.

“Better?” he asks, and John can’t help the size of his grin.

For the sake of John’s appetite, It’s a shame that Angelo’s is closed for the holiday.

For the sake of John’s heart where it swells in his chest at the way Sherlock looks at him, hopeful as he holds out one of the sweets: there’s never been a better Christmas, really, and John bites the head off a lime one, lets Sherlock eat two strawberries before he leans in and kisses Sherlock for all the bastard’s worth, licking the sweet starch dust from his lips, from his tongue, from the backs of his teeth.

John finds all the other flavours in the corner of the top drawer of Sherlock’s desk as he’s tidying, two weeks later.

He grins, and eats the blackcurrant ones: bins the yellows and the pinks.

_______________________________

After nearly a week away with Harry—helping her move, and then the weather holding up his return—he’d honestly have been perfectly fine with a half-burned flat smelling of chemicals and charred wood, so long as Sherlock was safe, and close, and warm against him on Christmas.

Because damnit, John’s missed the man like nothing else.

So, that said: it’s a surprise, and it makes him just this side of suspicious, when he climbs the steps to 221B with the scents of rich baking and savory meats wafting down the stairway. He unlocks the door and looks around for any hint of what on earth’s tempting his appetite so terribly, and nearly jumps from his skin as two hands settle on the lapels of his coat and move to take it from his shoulders; as a warm mouth breathes against his neck, voice low: 

“Allow me.”

Sherlock turns him around, hangs his jacket, and kisses him slow, nearly sweet upon the lips before he walks toward the kitchen, leaving John to follow, though he pauses, stops to admire the low-lights of the flat on the whole, the fairy-lights and the small tree decorated with pristine symmetry: absolutely care, and he smiles, turns to find Sherlock watching him closely, a large dish of something warm held in his oven-gloved hands.

“Well, this is a surprise,” John murmurs as he surveys what litters the kitchen: not body parts, but a small spread, really. Turkey with stuffing, roast potatoes, bread sauce, devils on horseback, brussel sprouts, redcurrant jelly, and oh, look at that: an almost proper-looking Christmas pud.

John’s mouth is watering before Sherlock starts nipping at the skin below his ear.

“I missed you,” Sherlock near-purrs, and John’s hungry, now, for something more than the food laid out before him.

“Did you do all this?” John asks breathlessly, while Sherlock sucks carefully along the line of his jaw.

“Most of it,” Sherlock’s voice rumbles through him, pressed tight against his back. 

“Mrs. Hudson offered a hand,”  he admits. “It turns out that cooking, despite my suppositions, requires more than simple chemistry,” he leans, kisses soft at the left corner of John’s mouth. “Something,” and then he moves, kisses the right corner, just as light, and John doesn’t bother to fight the shiver that runs through him, wild and gorgeous and aching for more: “Intangible, it seems, aids in the process.”

“A gentle touch and abiding affection?” John teases, a little dazed from the touch of his lover after so many days apart; the scent of him, so close once more: all his.

“Intuition,” Sherlock says with mild distaste, and John chuckles, turns to face him and clasps his arms loose around Sherlock’s neck.

“Or perhaps just good old fashioned _experience_ , love,” John nudges at his chin and Sherlock chews his lip around a smirk, eyes dancing, and John leans in for a long, satisfying kiss.

“Hmm,” Sherlock hums as they pull apart, leaning their foreheads together for a moment, for two. “Perhaps that.”

John chuckles, and pulls away; grabs a fork and pokes at the pudding.

“That’s for dessert!” Sherlock pouts, but John merely quirks an eyebrow at him: like _he’s_ a paragon of decorum and convention, seriously. 

“Yours, or Mrs. H?” John asks, circling the finished product, sniffing the whiskey on it.

“Mine,” Sherlock says blandly, and John can read the uncertainty as to whether he should own it, or deny. “She supervised,” he concedes, seems to deem it a worthy compromise.

John says nothing; slices off a piece and lobs on some cream. 

“It’s not a traditional one, obviously,” Sherlock says, but he hovers, talks straight through as John takes a bite, as he watches John’s reaction out the corner of his eye. “Mrs. Hudson wouldn’t trust me with the flame bit anyway, or so she said.”

John laughs around a second bite: it’s good. It’s damned good. “Do you even know what constitutes a ‘traditional one’?”

“I didn’t,” Sherlock admits, “until I suffered an hour’s worth of lecturing and head-shaking over the fact that I was making the pudding on Christmas morning.”

John laughs again, and kisses Sherlock, leaves a smudge of cream on the bow of his lip.

Sherlock grins wide enough to rival starshine, and doesn’t mind in the slightest. 

 

_______________________________

When he thinks about it—which is never intentional; in fact, it’s quite the opposite—but when he actually does think about it, John can admit to himself that he spends an inordinate amount of time considering Sherlock’s mouth. The shape of it. The little twitches and flicks of it. The curve of it. The press of it: how soft it might be, or else, how firm. The taste of it, the heat, and the fit of it right up against his—

Fact is, he thinks about it.

Quite a lot.

So it’s a bit like finding a cool spring in the desert, or the antidote to your poison just as your organs are about to fail; it’s a bit too much like wish fulfilment, too lovely to be true, when John walks into the flat and sees the Christmas decorations thrown every-which-way without any orienting principle, any rhyme or reason, but the one, the _one_ in just the perfect place, above the door he walks through, stops just inside as Sherlock comes—uncharacteristic, something must be _wrong_ —to grab the shopping from him.

Sherlock takes the bags and drops them to the floor; stands still, right in front of John, close enough for John to feel his warmth, his breath.

John’s chest is moving, heaving too sharply as he stares up, tries to make sense of the mistletoe dangling innocent, damning, right above where they stand.

“Sherlock?”

“ _Viscum album_ ,” Sherlock notes idly, but his chest’s knocking up against John’s on every inhale, and that says more than the words.

It’s Sherlock who’s brave, in the end, who takes this in his hands and makes something of it.

He meets John’s eyes, and John could swear the world lives there, in that gaze.

In the gaze they make together.

“You know my methods,” Sherlock breathes, and the stare of him is searing, and John’s burning from the inside, and it’s exquisite.

He knows Sherlock’s methods.

He’s got Sherlock’s face in his hands, Sherlock’s mouth against his lips, before either of them can breathe in.

_______________________________

Sherlock turns from unpacking his books when John chuckles.

“Look,” and John holds up the green leaves with the white berries: it had become a tradition, and there it sat in the middle of badly-tangled lights in the unmarked box John had been sorting through.

“Care to test it?” John asks cheekily, glancing around the cottage for a good place to hang it, despite the fact that December is still a few months off.

And suddenly, it hits him. It hits John like a load of bricks, the space and the scent of wood, the grain of it, the house that’s slowly finding itself peppered in fits and bursts with _them_ , with the life they’ve amassed and created between them, all battle scars and revelry and more wonder than John ever suspected the world held in it—more than he ever thought he’d find or know: it’s real, it’s theirs, it’s home.

Retirement, then. It looks a little bit terrifying.

It looks a little bit perfect.

John’s chest feels tight with the enormity, the simplicity of it just as he starts, jumps a little to find Sherlock next to him, quite close as he takes the mistletoe from John’s hands and draws it up above them for the barest of seconds before dropping it back into the box.

“It’s not as if we need it, anymore,” Sherlock tells him, his eyes wide, and John’s thought about it before, certainly, but it suddenly strikes him as if it’s brand new: just how beautiful Sherlock’s gaze is without barriers—with nothing left to hide.

Maybe John kisses Sherlock, then; or maybe Sherlock kisses John.

It doesn’t matter, of course.

But if it did, if ever it might: the both of them are more than content to spend the rest of their lives figuring it out.

_______________________________  


“John.”

He doesn’t expect to hear his name, not like that, at least. Doesn’t expect to hear it with attention and care, steeped in the kind of richness that he hears when when Sherlock’s wrapped in his arms, pressed up against him in their bed.

He doesn’t expect it. Not when they’ve got a case.

So he looks up, coffee poised at his lips as he meets Sherlock’s eyes: bright, more green than anything.

“Merry Christmas,” Sherlock tells him, voice low, lips quirked up at the corners, and John grins in return, puts his cup down and hands Sherlock a Jammie Dodger, which between them—now, by _now_ between _them_ —speaks volumes.

“Mmm,” John hums as he returns to his coffee and flips the page of the file he’s scouring. “You know, we may get this wrapped up before the day’s through.”

Sherlock’s hands still in shuffling the papers he holds. “If it’s possible?” he says, and if his voice was low before, it’s buried now, buried deep and molten in the pit of John’s stomach, the swell of his groin. “I have every intention of solving this case within the hour and dragging you back to the flat.”

John smirks, quirks his head and deadpans: “It would be an awful shame if I didn’t get to shag my partner on Christmas.”

Sherlock smirks, leers: “It would be an awful shame if I didn’t get to shag my partner in a given 12 hour period.”

At that, John laughs, has to adjust himself where he sits. “Insatiable, you are.”

Sherlock’s grin loses a bit of its wolfishness, but none of its joy. “A surprise for you, to be sure.”

“Best I ever got,” John tosses back without much thought; not until he notices the way Sherlock stiffens: not from discomfort, more from shock.

John straightens, considers his words, and looks Sherlock straight in the eye when he says, with all the feeling he possesses and thinks he could, one day, possess beyond even what he knows, with this man: _this man_.

“You’re the best I’ve ever got, Sherlock,” John tells him, and relishes the way Sherlock’s eyes glitter, rush through the spectrum and catch light all on their own. “Best I could ever get.”

It’s the truth. 

It’s the absolute truth.

John grabs a biscuit and goes back to the case with a grin on his face and something light, something lovely in his chest, all fluid and content.

_______________________________

 

At their ages—at _John’s_ age, and it’d made Sherlock’s heart soar and ache all at once, when John had passed gracefully, if shakily against his cane, into the tenth decade of his life, because it meant for every day that they were given, they were tempting statistical inevitability, tempting something more solid and concrete than fate, and while Sherlock has made progress with regard to his opinions on the idea—fate, something destined, something without tangible, discernible cause and yet _absolute_ ; and it is entirely ridiculous except that this is John, there has been John, there will be John until the last and for all the missteps, for all the falls and follies, there was John, there is John, and John is _his_.

_That_ is more than a statistical anomaly. 

But they’re tempting the laws of physics, the flow of nature: it’s never been otherwise, of course. Sherlock’s not a fool.

It’s just never felt so _real_.

The room—their room—is dark, save for the fairy lights, and the tree, because John rarely leaves the bed, not after this last bout: Sherlock tells him that, come spring, they’ll bring the bees back: the hives that Sherlock had bid farewell knowing, as John weakened, as the grip of his hand became riddled with subtle palsy at every brush and grasp: Sherlock had known, when tea could only fill a mug half-full, lest John spilled it across himself and risked a burn, that it was time to condense, to reflect, to be fully a heart where he’d balanced a head—time to saturate this, the end of his life, with the deep rhythm of his soul as it mingled, as it coiled around John’s and held tight, held desperate and wilful and beloved—that is how he wants to close his eyes unending, when the time comes.

With John in every cell, with John in every breath and every thought, every beating of his blood until the close.

In honesty, John’s well today; his breaths are steady, and his heart beneath Sherlock’s hand is stronger than it’s felt in far too long. John smiles, and he doesn’t drift to sleep. His glasses—thick-lensed and heavy—are perched at the end of that nose that’s never changed, that nose that Sherlock adores and had never stopped wanting to simply lean down and kiss the tip of at every opportunity, at every moment of the day: John squints, and the speed with which he makes any progress is limited, but the book’s pages are turned with relative regularity, and Sherlock has to marvel at this, at them, because for all the heartbreak he’s had, he’s caused: for all they will face, and too soon again, it’s been worth it, a thousand times over.

A thousand times over and more.

“Merry Christmas, darling,” and the snow is falling like whispersilk and icing sugar; and John’s voice, for all that it rasps and crackles, is still liquid amber and the soft kiss of heat in Sherlock’s chest: perfect, and his smile, his expression more wrinkles and veins than smooth flesh, is a marvel, a miracle, because it’s them, it’s everything they’ve lived and loved, and Sherlock never anticipated this, never thought that simple warmth and tender, trembling touch, and life as if bleeds gentle in the years at its end: he never thought this would be anything.

Would be _everything_.

“Merry Christmas,” Sherlock breathes into the fine strands of John’s white hair, presses his lips to the pulse in John’s temple at he draws the man, the love, the heart of him closer, ever closer still.: “My dear, _dear_ John.”

The snow drifts.

John reaches for Sherlock’s hand.

They drift.

Sherlock reaches back.


End file.
